Indian restaurant Kayal was in the news for all the wrong reasons last year,
but don't be put off visiting - the food is imaginative and vibrant

No restaurant can have been more relieved to see the back of the old year, or be more entitled to assume that the new one will be an improvement, than the recipient of this column’s award for Most Outrageously Unlucky Catering Establishment of 2013.

Now, even the planet’s finest restaurants are at risk, however fastidious their attention to hygiene, of embarrassment on the food hygiene front. Heston Blumenthal’s Bray flagship The Fat Duck suffered that oyster-induced norovirus outbreak a few years ago; last February, 67 diners at Copenhagen’s Noma were afflicted with something similar.

If it can happen to two former holders of the San Pellegrino world number-one ranking, it can happen to anyone. In November, it happened to a south Indian joint in Leicester; the cruelty about this one revolving around the identity of the victims. The 10 diners taken ill after a works outing to Kayal were health inspectors from the local council. Unsurprisingly, they shut the place pending investigations. Equally unsurprisingly, the press coverage highlighted the limitations of the old saw about there being no such thing as bad publicity.

With this in mind, smelling salts were not required when we arrived at the newly reopened Kayal to find that our failure to book a table wasn’t going to be a fatal obstacle to our getting one. “Why is it so empty?” asked a suspicious friend.

“I didn’t want to mention this before, for fear of ruining your appetite, but…” I said, introducing an explanation that caused him to blanch. “Well, I must say, this is very decent of you,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to try botulism. But wouldn’t it have been less trouble to buy an AK-47 off the dark internet, and shoot me in the head?”

The decor did nothing to assuage him. “There’s far too much to look at; it’s like a Baz Luhrmann film,” he sniffed, taking in a confused mishmash of blond wood, hanging lanterns, cheap mirrors, faux brickwork walls, a telly showing elephant-related tourist films from the owners’ native province of Kerala, and – resting for no apparent reason against a gaudy bar – a motorcycle.

He was so impressed with the cooking, however, that for stretches as long as 49 seconds he forgot the mortal peril in which he found himself. We were also besotted with the service from a waiter in an orange T-shirt, on the back of which was printed the legend “We enjoy seeing you!” Weirdly (how would anyone in their right mind enjoy seeing me?) it seemed a simple truth. This charming young guy could not have been friendlier, and his knowledge of the ingredients and cooking methods involved in every dish was astonishing.

The gastric unpleasantness, he ruefully reported on delivering the starters, was eventually sourced to a curry leaf. “I see,” said my friend, pointing at my adipoli aadu, lamb cubes in a medley of onion, black pepper, ginger and green chillies, seasoned with cumin, cardamom, turmeric and mustard seed, “and what is that?” “That,” said the waiter, peering down, “is a curry leaf.” “I see,” reiterated my friend, as I proffered a forkful. “You’re very kind, but I’ll be fine with my soup.” He missed a rich and gorgeous treat (and a safe one, since the restaurant has understandably changed curry leaf supplier), though his soup of lentil and “drumstick” (a sort of outsize okra), the first course from that Indian mini-banquet known as a thali, was “a taste sensation”.

We also shared a masala dosa, the southern Indian pancake classic in which midly spiced potato, onion and pea is encased in a thin, crispy sheet of deep-fried rice and lentil flours. This too was majestic.

(MARTIN POPE)

“I’m beginning to think there may be a better than 50-50 chance of getting out of this alive,” said my friend, as he attended to the main body of the thali, in which discs of squid were joined in a circle by little bowls of vegetable curry, potato, a mild chicken dish, another of lamb, rice, bread (a puri) and a coconut pancake. “Everything’s beautiful. This food genuinely is superb.”

I went for just one dish, tilapia pollichathu, “taken from Achukutty’s recipe book – our mom from Travancore, Kerala’s agricultural Christian family”, according to a menu which endearingly cleaves to the winsome and verbose. The fish had been marinated in a tomatoey paste, wrapped in a banana leaf, infused with lemon and spices, and steamed. Hats off to Achukutty: it was spectacular.

Kayal is regarded by some as the best Indian in Leicester, which is stellar praise given the city’s strong south Asian community, and its reputation for outstanding subcontinental cuisine: and no wonder. While the decor may leave you feeling oddly nostalgic for flock wallpaper, for cooking as imaginative, vibrant and technically adroit as this, I would merrily endure a little light food poisoning (apart from anything else, darlings, the weight loss!). Those of you who feel differently are assured that there were no distasteful after effects from this meal, and that Kayal is well worth a visit to sample an enthralling regional cuisine that might, if only it were more widely available, shake up the tired dominion of the high street tandoori.